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Essential Tech Skills for College Students

Every college student needs to have some solid tech skills if they are going to be successful both while in school earning good grades and after graduation in the work force. Not only is this the best way to ensure that you maintain a high GPA, but it’s also a huge help in getting all of your work done as efficiently as possible. This way you can have more time to yourself to actually have a life outside of college. Not sure what kinds of skills you need? Here are some essential tech skills for college students.

Word Processing

When you’re in college, you are going to be writing a lot of papers. Not only do you need to know how to write well, but you need to know how to use a word processor to properly format all of your papers. If you don’t know how to insert headers, footers, footnotes, indent quotations, etc. then you are not going to be able to turn in your papers for full credit with most professors. So be sure that you use a standard word processor and master it before you have to start writing papers.

PowerPoint Presentations

You are definitely going to be putting together a lot of PowerPoint presentations, or other computer presentations of a similar nature. This is a skill that requires you to make several slides that will explore the various themes of your presentation and break them up into simple, digestible, bullet-pointed facts. If you do not know how to put together a computer presentation of this nature, then you are going to need to learn how.

Proper Email Etiquette

There are a lot of professors who will ask you to turn in homework assignments via email, especially if you go to an online school like ACU Online, and there’s a good chance that you will need to ask your professors questions from time to time via email. If you don’t know the etiquette behind interacting with your professors in this way, then you could make some very classic, avoidable mistakes. Be sure that you always respond to an email within 24 hours, always speak with a tone of respect and understanding, and always begin and end your emails with proper greetings and salutations.

Informed Internet Research

In the past, college professors would not accept any kind of research conducted online because they didn’t trust that any of the sources would be legitimate. However, these days, there are a lot of trustworthy websites that you can reference, so long as they are a solid source of truthful information. Knowing the difference, though, is an essential skill that you will need to learn if you are going to be able to write strong papers. So be sure that you know the difference between a respected and trusted source, and a completely flimsy source. One of the easiest ways to tell is that a good source will list their own sources. If you follow those sources, you will be able to tell whether or not they come from primary sources or other fluff articles.